10 Must Have Tools When Cooking For Your Dog

We live in the Pacific Northwest. Often times when I say that, in my mind I hear the call of trumpets and envision fish jumping about in a glacial stream while glorious pine trees billow in the mountain wind. Yup, I’m in love with the beautiful PNW, truly an awe inspiring part of this glorious country. We value organic farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, and ranchers are allowed to graze cattle in national forest land free of herbicides and pesticides – and our salmon are some of the best you’ll ever taste, fresh from ocean and rivers. The abundance of high-quality food is one of the reasons we cook for our dogs.

Cooking for Your Dog

The main source of protein for one of our dogs is fish. Lulu’s diet consists of a majority of fish protein if mixed with other sources. We often make her salmon or sardine-based meals and treats. Mookie on the other hand can eat any protein, including salmon, beef, lamb, buffalo, turkey, duck and chicken. We cook and un-cook meals for our dogs. Un-cook? Yup, raw. Our dogs eat a wide-variety of high-quality food that we cook and un-cook for them. The trick with raw food is proper handling techniques and to freeze it all, and safely thaw the portion you serve each day. Don’t save left overs in the fridge. Put them back in the freezer (only once) and serve what remains in a few days (again follow safe thawing protocol). Cooking for your dog is fairly simple: cook like you would for yourself, using dog-safe ingredients, and again freeze. Don’t give your dog cooked bones, period. It’s really not that complicated – even though you may hear that it is. And, you may want to add a high-quality supplement to your dog’s meals – we use Dr. Harvey’s Herbal Multi-Vitamin and Mineral Supplement for Dogs.

10 Must Have Tools When Cooking For Your Dog

When you have had dogs in your family since you were a kid, you learn a few things about how to cook for them. When I was a kid I tried feeding my dog a cake from my Easy Bake Oven. You can put that down under ‘bad idea’ – hey I was nine! Since that time I’ve learned a few things, and just like cooking for a human it often comes down to having the right tools. Here are some of the best tools we’ve discovered for making your dog’s meals and treats:

Vitamix Food Blender. A must have for making green veggie mix for your dogs. Sure a kale leaf is healthy, with this patented tool you’ll be able to pack in 100 times more green anti-cancer, free-radical fighting veggies, making for one healthy, kick-butt mix that your dogs will love. Here’s our much asked for green veggie mix recipe. And for storing our pup’s green mix we now use the Brew Armor Silicone Mason Jar.

Excalibur Dehydrator. This gadget is the key to making healthy dog treats. Select what items are fresh, and dog-friendly, from your garden or local farmer’s market, clean and trim, dehydrate and treat! We use ours quite frequently for making green bean snacks, carrot and apple rings, and salmon jerky. Say what? Yup, salmon jerky – here’s the recipe. To make dog-friendly fruit and veggie leathers, and to keep your dehydrator clean use a liner. Also, make sure you have good knives – we use Porsche knives, I’m a real stickler when it comes to high-quality knives.

Baking/Freezing Trays. We can’t get enough of these little trays that can be used in the oven as well as the freezer. Want to make a little dog muffin, bake with these and for those cool treats packed full of gut-friendly probiotics just mix up your recipe, pour into a mold, freeze and serve one a day. Don’t have a recipe? Here you go! Also, have some fun making your dog cookie treats with dog-themed shapes.

Cuisinart Mini Prep Plus. This sturdy and compact tool makes small-job chopping and mixing a breeze. We use the Mini Prep almost every week, whether we’re making the dogs some salmon sliders or a dog-friendly burger this tool makes mixing easy and clean up a breeze. Speaking of clean up, you’ll want to stock up on dog-themed cleaning towels – while any towel will do, come on, dog-themed cleaning towels make the world a happier place!

Bonus Recipes – go ahead, pin ’em!

Preparing food for the one you love is very rewarding – and that’s why we make our dogs their meals and treats. In some cultures food preparation is a labor of love, and that’s true for me as a Latina – but with these gadgets, it’s less laborious and more love-orious. Ha – I just made up a word!Thanks for reading, and until next time – take care and keep on lovin’ your dog!

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Rebecca Sanchez is a nationally recognized leader in the human-animal bond. Known as "The Pet Lifestyle Guru™" at MattieDog (her heart dog)! Rebecca is an award winning writer that blogs about her life with her doggos, and sometimes about her husband who reluctantly agrees to participate in her shenanigans. Rebecca's work can be seen in numerous dog magazines, and in her books on Amazon.

20 Comments

kelly
on February 15, 2017 at 5:49 am

I bet Lulu and Mookie enjoy and appreciated all the home cooked meals you make for them! I’m thinking I would like some of those kitchen appliances for myself 🙂

I’ll say one thing, your animals eat way better than my husband and I do. Come to think of it, so do our animals. I just started cooking my senior sweetie Red’s meals as per the advice of her holistic vet, so thanks for the great list. Time to get shopping!

While I don’t cook my dog’s food, I do love making treats for them. I think I’ll be expanding my repertoire to include some of your recipes eventually. My most coveted item on your list? Dog themed towels!Beth recently posted…Happy Tails: Knightley the Pekingese Mix

You are so fortunate to have an abundance of organic and fresh food available where you live, especially salmon! My Husky Icy lives for salmon, she would love to arrive at your house with her suitcase and STAY! It would be a dream for her to eat all the salmon she could get her paws on. These are some pretty nifty kitchen gadgets you’ve got there, you must be such a pro in the kitchen!
Love & Biscuits,
Dogs Luv Us and We Luv Them

Those baking trays are so cute! So I’ll be investing in that for sure – what a sweet gift for another pet parent too. The green veggie mix sounds great and honestly I think I could benefit from that as well so maybe I’ll share with the pack!

I love cooking and food and am often picking up trays, molds and other things to cook for Kiko. My next purchase is going to be the dehydrator. Luckily he can eat anything so far and he appreciates EVERYTHING LOL. He loves salmon, tuna and other meat veggies and fruit.

I don’t cook for myself, therefore it’s really ironic that started cooking from a senior dog a couple of years ago. She has a chronic G.I. condition, and I really appreciate the st I don’t cook for myself, therefore it’s really ironic that started cooking from a senior dog a couple of years ago. She has a chronic G.I. condition, and I really appreciate these tips!!